As Thomas Mulcair can attest, it is rather easier to speak about the oil sands than it is to actually get up here and see what is going on. Fort McMurray, Alta. is remote, and while my first visit was rather longer than Mr. Mulcair’s, it was still only a full day.

Three years ago, upon the occasion of the merger of oil sands pioneer Suncor with Petro-Canada, this column examined some of the ethical questions posed by oil sands development. The argument then was just emerging about “ethical oil,” namely that Alberta oil is morally and strategically superior because it does not support odious regimes, from Venezuela to Saudi Arabia to Russia. The argument has only become stronger since then, propelled by Ezra Levant’s eponymous book, and adopted in the rhetoric of the federal government.

The argument is actually stronger than comparative politics, with “democratic” oil trumping “tyrannical” oil. Only some 25% of the world’s oil reserves are developed by private companies; the vast majority are state enterprises. Of that quarter of global reserves, half are in the oil sands.

The oil sands are a minority phenomenon in the oil business — development by private companies subject to the rule of law, accountable to public shareholders and disciplined by market forces. Those displeased with the oil sands can lobby Suncor and the other companies operating here, they can shape the public-policy environment, they can even invest and become shareholders, something rather easier to do in Calgary than in Caracas.

Indeed, the oil sands exist in a public environment shaped largely by their adversaries. Being toured around for the day by the folks at Suncor, I had to remind myself that energy production was the whole point of the endeavour. Aside from the actual extraction plant, where the liquefied black gold oozes forth, all the talk is about the environment, aboriginal relations and community involvement. It’s almost as if an enormous social development project — recreation centres, health clinics, mobile dentistry units, school funding, investment in aboriginal enterprises, immigration assistance, translation services — was the main task, with a lucrative sideline in energy production to fund it all.

Without irony, our earnest guide spoke glowingly of the vast bus network employed by the various companies to get thousands of workers to the sites, proudly boasting of the reduced emissions the bus fleet achieves.

Environmentalists ought to be pleased that the proudest boast of the oil sands is not their oil production but their environmental reclamation projects, and that new technology that may obviate the need for tailings ponds altogether.

Like all first-time visitors to the oil sands, I was struck by the scale of the projects. Some are apparently scandalized by this, but the sheer human ingenuity behind the engineering is surely inspiring. From a scientific and technological standpoint, there is much to take pride in, a global success story developed right here in Canada.

Many objections arise from a lack of comparative sensibility. The gigantic shovels and trucks do create mining pits of vast size, but the utter vastness of Alberta’s north dwarfs whatever impact the oil sands might have. The forests of northern Alberta stretch out as far as even an airborne eye can see; a modest forest fire would impose a far greater footprint than the mines do.

It is true that an open pit mine is not a lovely thing, but then energy generation is rarely aesthetically pleasing. It is not obvious that a large mine, destined to be reclaimed, is any worse than the flooded land upstream of a hydroelectric dam, or the enormous towers of a nuclear reactor. Or to make the point more generally, how is a mine in a remote part of Canada’s northern emptiness more despoiling than a large auto plant on the shores of Lake Ontario in Canada’s most densely populated region?

The oil sands, like any major industrial project, are not without tradeoffs. Yet I have never been to any operation where more attention was paid to mitigating effects than to the principal enterprise. I understand why the oil sands are defensive, which is rather the proper response when being attacked. But there should also be pride in the massive entrepreneurial, technical, and human achievement of harvesting the Earth’s bounty. That pride belongs naturally enough to Albertans, but Canadians as a whole should share in it too.

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